


The Good, The Bad, and The Bloody

by TheQueen



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M, Multi, Trans Female Character, Undercover Missions, fem!Jack, undercover cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4584057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say Mogar started as a cop. </p><p>  <sub>Inspired by <a href="http://horrificsmut.tumblr.com/">horrificsmut‘s </a> headcanoned of <a href="http://horrificsmut.tumblr.com/post/126381972117/i-need-fahc-michael-who-toils-at-quantico-who">Michael as an undercover cop</a>. </sub></p><p>[DISCOUNTED]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy._

_~ Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)_

…

They say Mogar started as a cop. And that’s the truth.

Good friends. Good neighborhood. Good career. But crazy as fuck. That’s what everyone knew about Mogar.

In the end it made sense, of course it did, that the kid from New Jersey just snapped. Got his hands on something that went boom and whipped out a whole precinct, taking two cops out with him. And of course he wouldn’t stop there. Not Mogar. He ran from New Jersey to DC. Had the whole country screaming and shaking in fear when he set a charge on the Washington Monument for shits and giggles. He left clues and some say it’s because he wanted to get caught and others argue because he liked watching them fail. In the end, it doesn’t matter because they couldn’t, but in the end Mogar didn’t blow it up because “it wasn’t worth it.”

And after that, everyone knew the name Mogar the same way they knew Michael Jackson or President motherfucking Bush.

And for a long time, he worked solo. Killing gangs and claiming property all over DC, running drug trades and slave trades and gold trades with an iron fist and a list of silent helpers that were probably all dead the minute Mogar left town (because everyone knew Mogar was never one to leave loose ends). He left after he made a mess in DC. Stuck around Chicago until the FBI got too smart. Eventually, he settled in New York three years later and so close to his old stomping. It was said he would spend his days making cops chase their own tail for the fun of it. Committed petty crimes and kicked local groups to the curb because he could.

The first crew he joined went big. Went bigger than big. From a small town thug group milling around in the corners of New York City to the kings of kings, everyone knew it was because of Mogar, sitting tall on his throne made of C4 and cocaine. It took two bank robberies for the media to start calling them the Rockstars because they wore KISS face paint on jobs and liked to play rock music whenever committing a heist. It was cheap and gimmicky and caught the attention of the media, which was something everyone said Mogar craved.

“Its common that killers like Mogar would want recognition for his work,” Psychologists would tell media outlets.

For two years, the Rockstars ruled. Ridding the streets of competition until they had the city in an iron coffin with no intention of letting go. But nothing is meant to last. Not really. Not good kids. Not good cops. Not good crews. It went sour on a drug trade down south when the CIA and FBI got a little two smart, a little too cunning. People say the Rockstars went down swinging, burning, and never screaming. Others say it was a quit kill, throats slit while they slept and poison in the booze. Either way, it marked the first crew Mogar would ever lose.

It wouldn’t be the last.

After that, people said he stayed low, a ghost of a ghost. But everyone knew his work. Explosions and blood made to look like art in cities where small crews went bigger than big, too fast and too good for their own good. But Mogar never seemed to stick around to watch their success, not after his first crew. And in a couple years those crews would fall behind prison bars and electric chairs, with only the stories of Mogar to whisper through prison bars throughout the country until the legend of Mogar were almost as big as the Vagabound’s.

Years passed and his legend grew. Everyone knew it. The criminals, the G-men, the civilians. The story of a good cop with a good past gone crooked with a knack for explosions and a taste for blood might as well have been written in the stars. Seemingly infallible with a magic touch that made small crews strong enough to run cities. His story gave criminals hope and civilians something to warn their children about at night.

But the truth–the truth that nobody knew– of the legend of Mogar, of the crooked cop with no reason to go crooked, was that Mogar, better known as Agent Jones to the undercover world, had never gone crooked to begin with.

He was just a very, very good actor.

…

Michael’s cutting lines in some backdoor, dingy bar with only two or three patrons left post-rush hour. There’s a sort of magic about a place like this. In the lighting and the way the beer always tastes the same. It’s why Michael likes to hide here, far away from everything else, playing with whatever he’s got on him. His phone’s off but he knows the minute he turns it one he’s going catch shit for missing another meet up.

But what’s the point when there’s nothing he’s running. No con or heist. No crew or mob or mafia to take out. He’s just here. Existing when Mogar is taking a break. So why not treat himself to some backwater beer in a bar too low key to meet health regulations, at home amongst the beaten cushions and scratched tables.

It isn’t that he doesn’t see the finger--too many years living like this, high strung and ready to die, to not notice it--but rather he just doesn’t give a shit if someone takes a snack from his shit. It isn’t like he was gonna snort it anyway. When the deep baritone attached to that finger said, “Choice,” with a straight face like some dipshit out of some hippie-loving 90s movie trying to be hip with the young ones, Michael laughed.

“Hey, Rye-bread,” Michael said, offering the famous Vagabond, maskless for the moment, a seat at his table.

“Hey, Mikey,” Ryan takes it and sets down a root beer float.

“You wound me, Ryan,” Michael pouts, stealing a sip of his drink and wrinkling his nose, “Strawberry ice cream? Really?”

Ryan shrugs, sheepish, “It’s all they have.” He gestures to the table. “I didn’t know you did drugs.”

“I don’t,” Michael admits, “Picked it off a dead body. Needed to do something with my hands.” And Michael can feel Mogar under his skin, but he’s too tired for a show and really all he really wants to do is climb into his rusty Pontiac and find some two-star hotel room off the I-405 and not move for a day or two. But instead he’s here because he had a meet up he almost went to. And now he can’t be bothered to turn on his cell phone.  “Whacha doin’ here, Rye?”

“I heard you were in town,” Ryan admits and it makes Michael smile. Ryan was….he was like fresh air sometimes. It was hard finding someone who could say whatever the fuck they wanted in their pay grade.

“That’s nice.” Michael smiles and then tilts his head to the left, gesturing to the door with his chin where a young man with a ratnest for a hair seemed to be bouncing in place, starring at their table openly and rather annoyingly, “But who’s the escort?”

“A friend,” Ryan says “He has a car that’s a lot faster than mine.”

And Michael’s mode sours. “You joined a crew.” There’s no room for arguing.

Ryan doesn’t deny it. That’s something he liked about the guy. It really was. No bullshit.

“I thought you didn’t do crews.”

Ryan shrugged, “Things changed. You used to.”

Michael closes his eyes and breathes slow

“I’m sorry,” And he’s sincere. “I shouldn’t have brought them up.”

“No,” Michael agrees, “You shouldn’t have.”

And Michael looks away to watch Ryan’s crewmember by the door. The fucker’s still bouncing, only pausing once he realizes whose watching him. Michael can see his blush from across the room. “I thought the rumors were false.”

“They’re good people.”

“No one stays good in this line of work,” Michael argues.

Ryan laughs. “That’s my line,” he smiles and finishes off his root beer float.

The night drags on after that as folks spill out or fall asleep. The crewmate finally settles at a seat by the bar as Michael polishes off two beers and Ryan another float. “Wanna ditch’ im?” Michael suggests when there’s a lull in the conversation between them after talking too long about nothing.

‘That would be very rude,” Ryan argues, wiping white dust off his shirt sleeves.

Michael smirks, “But I’ve got a Pontiac and you’ve got a hotel room.”

Ryan pauses for a moment and looks up to meet Michael’s eye, “How is it that you know me so well after all these years?”

Michael laughs.

…

The crewmates name is Gavin and his voice is more annoying than his bouncing. Of course, Michael has the sense not to say this out loud. “He’s British.”

Ryan is smiling. “Yes.”

Gavin is beaming, “I’m a huge fan of your work,” he says and holds his hand out for a handshake.

Michael indulges him. “Thank you.”

Ryan is quick to call the meeting to an end, though when the silence is reaching an awkward level. “I’m going with Michael.”

Gavin frowns. “Geoff’s not gonna be too pleased…”

Michael rolls his eyes. “I didn’t know you were on a leash these days, Rye-bread.” It’s getting cold out as summer gives to fall and he wraps his jacket a little tighter around him. It would only be a few more hours til sunrise.

“He’ll understand,” Ryan insists and slips an arm around Michael’s waist and Michael leans in, indulging himself this time.

“ ‘ight,” Gavin doesn’t look convinced but he watches them walk to Michael’s car without a word and only leaves when he sees them peel out of the parking lot and down the road.

He has a phone call to make.

…

The first time Michael slept with Ryan, Ryan still drank. Could match him shot to shot when Michael was still so new to this (double life, con artist, robbing piece of shit of a life that has been wearing him thin for eight long years of city to city, day to day, job to job). Baby faced and anything but a lightweight, still carrying his good past around his neck like a paperweight so people could pick him out of a crowd by his straight back and his curly red hair (if they knew what to look for). They’d just finished a job, still flying high, riding out the glory of a job well down. Partners by chance, they’d slipped into a good comradely that had the potential of something else. Something a little long lasting in this line of work.

But Michael hadn’t known the rules then. Hadn’t known what to look for. (And he’d never considered himself innocent at the time but that was the power of hindsight.) But Ryan had been kind. Ryan had seen a potential in this thing long before Michael and Michael owes him for that. Ryan was his first friend in this world.

He was not stumbling when Ryan takes his hand. He wasn’t slurring when he agrees to get in his car. But he’d felt like he was floating, breathing in too much oxygen. The thoughts in his head moving slow but steady to a destination unknown. When Ryan takes him to his hotel and tells Michael he can leave, that Michael owes him nothing, Michael could only pull him into a slow kiss.

It was only later that Michael would realize that it was the first time someone had asked him for his consent since he’d started this con.

After that it’s easy to slide into Ryan’s bed. It wasn’t often. Months and years would pass before their paths would cross, on jobs or just by chance. Sometimes Michael would find him if he heard a rumor he was in town just for a drink or a chance to say help. But time could not shake that feeling of normalcy that came with waking up in Ryan’s arms, his breathe on the back of his neck (so easy to kill a man when his back is turned in a world where honor is coded in your kill count).

Now Michael slips off with practiced ease even though it’s been years since they’ve indulged in this thing that’s more about friendship than pleasure. Muscles still loose and shaking from his first orgasm in three months (not by choice because work rarely means alone time and he’s never going to get used to the lack of privacy when you join a group--not a crew. He hasn’t had a crew in a long time).

“Why are you here really, Rye-bread?” And there’s a fondness there born of time and history. Sometimes, between lives when he’s just Michael and not FBI-Michael or Wanted Criminal-Mogar, he feels like this man is probably his last friend on this god awful Earth. And that’s the reason why he can’t even find it in himself to be upset.

“I have a job offer, for you,” Ryan admits, tracing spiraling patterns against his skin, curling close so Michael can feel Ryan’s breathe against his neck. And Michael feels calm. “But it can wait for the morning.”

“Okay, Ryan.”

“Goodnight, Michael.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited for this because it's my first multichapter Fake AH fic. I hope you guys like it!


	2. Chapter 2

That night Michael dreams of walking.

He’s in the country with nothing but old grass reaching up to his knees and the endless expansion of a blue sky above, stretching from horizon to horizon. The air is sweet with heat but soon it will give to rain. And he knows this in the same way we all know things in dreams. In the same way he knows he needs to walk west.

He’s going to see the ocean.

(And a part of him that exists in another world knows he’s seen the ocean, has felt the coolness of the water, has taught himself how to keep his head above pounding waves. But he also knows he needs to see it before it’s too late. Knows he needs to move.)

So he starts moving.

…

Ryan has terrible morning breathe but he kisses Michael goodbye by the door of the hotel room as someone in a soccer mom van honks the horn to hurry the fuck up. And Michael can still feel Ryan’s fingerprints on his waist as he makes coffee and picks apart the room for a packet of crackers. When he turns on his phone, he has 17 missed calls, 15 text messages, and a very long voicemail that he really doesn’t want to listen to.

It takes two rings for his handler to pick up.

“Where. _The Fuck._ Have you been?”

It’s 10am and Ryan has just left and Michael’s still on his first cup of coffee. And he’s tired. “This is being recorded, Andrew.”

There’s a moment of silence and then a hissed, “Fuck you,” that makes Michael chuckle.

“Vagabound offered me a job with the Fake AH Crew.”

And Michael takes a sip of his coffee and waits. “You wanna run this?”

“It’s a gamble,” Michael admits. “If I fuck it up, it’s game over.”

“Yeah…”

And Michael can remember the first time he’d considered this con: taking out the Vagabound. A lifetime ago when he was fresh faced and overjoyed with the knowledge that their con was working (though the boards upstairs hated when he calls it that, trying to pretend that Michael isn’t a criminal when he is. Just a legal one). He had considered it. Just for a moment. He hadn’t even learned Ryan’s name yet. Hadn’t seen him in the field. Hadn’t known what he would be dealing with.

Legends aren’t always lies.

“But this might be your way out, Mikey.” Andrew cuts in, brings him back to now and here, in this small motel room with shitty coffee and a packet of crackers. “You take down the bastards and no suit wearing fuck can deny you haven’t done enough.”

Michael can’t breathe. “You’re shitting me?”

“If I sell this right, we could go home, Mikey.”

He forces himself to breathe in slow, close his eyes and think. Because every part of him wants this. He wants to go home and see his mother. He wants to go home and speak to his brothers. He wants to say hello to a niece that probably doesn’t know he exists and a nephew that only remembers him from the aftermath and headlines. He wants to retire somewhere far, far away from a bustling, hustling city and take up something retired people do like…golf? Or knitting?

But he’s been in the game long enough to be intimately aware of his limits. And if he dies then there’s no retirement plan. There’s no plan at all.

“It’s too big a risk,” Michael says. And he can only imagine the face at the other end of line. “I’m not risking it. I’ve worked too hard on this con to blow it now.”

“Fuck you, Jones.” Andrew sighs. 

And he hangs up.

…

_It begins like this:_

Michael was young and idealistic and very, very good at his job. His mother was very proud. His brothers were, admittedly, a little envious. His father was not a very vocal man, but Michael can tell. His father was proud, as well.

And Michael was just happy that he was doing good.

Or at least, he thought so.

It begins on a day when the sun is hitting the pavement just a little too hard and breathing was a chore. He was on deskwork and proofing a few reports from earlier that week when he caught something off. It was a little thing, but he was a new guy. Had only graduated recently. Only gotten a job even more recently. A mistake like that could have fall out he wasn’t willing to deal with. So he headed to the evidence room where they store shit set to be processed. He hated it down there. The place was dark and depressing and smelt a little too much like blood, but he didn’t want a mark on his record. So he went. And that’s when he saw it. It was a small thing. Just like in the report. Something easy to overlook.

And because he was young and idealistic and he hadn’t been around long enough to learn blue silence the same way the others had, Michael went to his boss for help. Michael trusted his boss. He was an old man. Been in the service for a lot longer than a lot of people and it showed in the hunch of his back and the wrinkles on his face. And he was a good man. Fatherly. Not in the same way Michael’s father was, but in the way father’s on TV were: warm and goofy but serious all the same. So when his boss told him that he’ll deal with it, Michael trusted him.

And Michael was just happy he’d done good.

It didn’t take long for Michael to realize the others had started to treat him differently. It took an even shorter amount of time for Michael to realize nothing had changed. He found another mistake, another small amount of evidence missing. It didn’t take him long to notice that a certain set of officers were being sent on one too many “drug raids.” Because he’d always been very observant and he was very, very good at his job.

After that, he started taking notes. He knew something was going on. He suspected something worse. But he couldn’t put his finger on it, didn’t know where the drugs ere going. Didn’t know where the money was coming from. He didn’t want to risk his position here in the center of it all where, maybe, they didn’t trust him but they didn’t distrust him. And he kept it up for three months. His first undercover mission and he didn’t even know it.

It came to a head when an innocent man died and Michael, innocent, idealizing Michael, couldn’t sit around any longer. He knew there was more here. He knew he should wait. But there was a dead man on a cold slab that shouldn’t be dead because of something he could stop. Now. He could end it.

Michael gave himself two weeks to try and find something, to piece it all together. He couldn’t. Instead he wrote a report. Formal and neat and important looking, just like he’d been taught in school and shipped it out to every news outlet he could Google in ten minutes under a false name. And then it was just a waiting game. He went home that Monday and turned on the Ten O’clock news expecting it to break headlines. Instead he got a story about traffic problems on 18 and a phone call from a very important man in DC who wanted to talk about what he knew.

And this is how it begins.

…

Two day’s later, Michael’s in the chip isle of a nearby Wawa when he changes his mind.

He doesn’t know why, really. Maybe it’s just that moment. The dull pulse of the florescent lights above and the plastic colors of the bags around him. Sickly bright. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep that night and when he gets to the cashier, he has to make sure he grabs the right ID out of the four he always carries around, just in case. Maybe it’s because all he’s eaten that day was poor coffee and a dollar sandwich that tasted like sawdust and salt. But really, that’s too poetic.

Maybe, he just knows he wants to go home.

He calls Andrew and leaves a voice mail because that fucker never picks up, telling him to sell the con. It takes Michael a minute or so to find Kerry’s number.

Kerry picks up on the third try, “Mogar?” There’s a quick shuffle and a whispered “no fucking way,” behind Kerry that tells Michael he isn’t alone.

Michael can’t help the little bit of Mogar that slips through. “This isn’t a social call.”

There’s silence and then movement. Fabric and the pounding of bare feet on wood. Kerry only speaks when a door shuts and locks. “I have a permanent employer now, Michael.”

“I thought you worked for me,” Michael reminds him. Reminds him of what Kerry owes him. Reminds him of why Kerry is where he is to begin with.

Kerry sighs. “What can I help you with?”

“I need to get in touch with the Vagabond and his new crew,” Michael requests. But really it’s more of an order.

Kerry curses as Michael steps into his car and switches his phone to speaker. “You’re not going to…”

And Michael has a sinking feeling that he knows who Kerry’s knew permanent employer is. “Ryan and I are friends, Kerry. For now it’s a social visit,” he lies. Because he doesn’t know how much Kerry knows. And he doesn’t know how much Kerry’s been compromised. And Michael makes a mental note to check up on the rest of his contacts because he might have grown lazy this past year if he wasn’t even aware that Kerry had joined a crew, let alone Ryan’s.

“You’ll warn me right, though,” Kerry’s typing something. Probably an address.

“Of course,” Michael reassures him. “If I was. That is the deal.”

“Okay, Michael.” And Michael’s phone buzzes. He has a new text. It should be an address.

“Okay, Kerry.”

…

_It starts here:_

Michael was young and idealistic and very, very good at his job. And people had taken notice. The FBI Agent who introduced herself as Agent Park fashioned him a cup of coffee from their break room and thanked Michael for making the trip to DC so quickly.

“We’ve been looking into your precinct for some time, Officer Jones,” Agent Park said, sitting down. “And your report is exactly the kind of information we’ve been needing.”

“I’m glad I could of assistance,” Michael said and he meant it. These were supposed to be his brothers in arms, but that didn’t stop them from being crooks. And Michael had spent too much of his life dedicated to taking down crooks to let them slide.

“And you have,” Park reassured him, “But we both know there’s another party involved and if you agree to help us, I have clearance to bring you in on this investigation.”

And Michael may be many things but he was not dumb. “What does that mean for me?”

“I can’t give you details,” Park admitted, “Just bringing you here has been a gamble, but it would require you to continue, too an extent, what you’ve been doing for the past three months.”

“Okay,” And Michael could do that. It had been stressful to maintain a façade (and he was certain he hadn’t done it very well based on the way the other’s had begun to avoid him at times except for a select few), but he could do it. He thought of the wrong body on a cold slab and knew he had to. Because one body was enough.

“I’m very glad to hear that. Please call me Yoshiko.” Agent Park was smiling. “I look forward to working with you.”

He goes back to New Jersey and smiles when the boss he thought he could trust welcomes him back. And all he can see when he looks at that face is a headshot on a white board with the words “Serial Killer?” written on the side. And when he heads back to his desk, he forces himself to accept the coffee Detective Hill makes him and tries not to think of the series of notes he’d read at the bottom of Hill’s FBI profile. And now that he knows, it’s hard to tell friend from foe. But he signed a contract that swore he’d see this through and he’s scared.

And this is where it starts. 

…

It isn’t that Ryan hadn’t left him a meet up point and time if he wants to take the job. It’s just that Michael hasn’t waited for what he wants in a long time (and he is scared if he waits too long, he’ll back out. And Andrew would have to fly down and kill him.) So he slips into Ryan’s apartment (which is much bigger and more expensive than he expected from a man who’d sleep on park benches when he wasn’t bothered enough to walk to a hotel) when the place is empty, pops open the fridge to grab some strangely named micro-brewery beer that Ryan must keep around for his crew because Ryan hadn’t drank since ’05 and sits down in front of the TV to wait.

Kerry had said they’d be back by seven so he has an hour or so to kill.

He’s half way through an episode of some new SYFY show when the door to the apartment bursts open and a gun fires. And it’s only thanks to a history containing one too many enemies that Michael manages to dodge the bullet without spilling his drink.

“Rude,” he jokes, glancing up at the door expecting Ryan and instead seeing…the crewmate? from the bar holding a gun with a look of confusion that echoed Michael’s own. “Whoops!…I thought this was the Vagabond’s apartment.”

The crewmate (and he’s certain Ryan must have told him his name) makes a sort of squeaking sound.

Michael frowned. “Okay…right well. Sorry?” He finishes off his beer and sets it on the table as the gun lowers. “I’ll just be heading out. Got an informant to strangle.”

He’s grabbing his coat when the crewmate manages to speak, “Wait.” And right. Michael had forgotten he was British. “Ryan lives here.”

“Oh?” Michael says, setting his jacket down and turning to look at the Brit, “Do you two room together?” That might explain how fancy the place wis. Ryan didn’t really care for it. He liked killing people too much to be in it for the money.

The Brit nods, “The whole crew, really.”

Michael smiles and its all Mogar, “That’s convenient.” He says as he pushes off the wall and heads into the living room. “Mind grabbing another beer from the kitchen. I figure we’ve got another hour to kill.”

“Does… Does this mean you’re taking the job?” And the Brit is fidgeting again, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Mogar rolls his eyes, “Why else would I be here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) You should all check out this amazing [PODCAST](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4595841/chapters/10471812) that [mightbeanasshole](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole) has made!
> 
> 2) College has started for me so I'll try to continue to update weekly but if it doesn't work out then it'll be every two weeks. Sorry but I'm expecting classes to kick my ass this semester!
> 
> 3) I'm always willing to talke FAHC and am currently taking drabble prompts at [my tumblr! ](http://thequeen117.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

Mogar observes the crew with a sort of detached amusement usually reserved for a nature observer or staking out a bank’s security route as the crew watches him in turn. Ryan, in particular, watches him with the slightest annoyance only given away by the whites of his knuckles and the slightest furrow of his brow. Or it could be worry. Maybe Mogar is projecting.

The leader is still yelling (Geoff Ramsey. King of Los Santos with connections to Burns down South, Hullum in the North and Joel (last name unknown) who was more a third party for hire than a crew with territory. Self-made. Family unknown. Original name unknown. Origins Unknown. Usually acts as the mastermind or pointman during a heist but is known to get his hands dirty when necessary.) Ramsey is more than annoyed; he is furious. He also has very good lungs. “And you,” he snaps, “You gave him,” and now he is pointing at Mogar, back turned (and Mogar calculates eight easy ways to kill him right now, even while handcuffed to the kitchen chair as he is. But that would give away the con and Ryan would be made at him.) “Our fucking address? What the fuck, Ryan?”

(And Mogar is amazed that they’re even having this conversation in front of him. Why isn’t he in a cell? A back room? Why is he here in their kitchen with a pair of handcuffs and members who haven’t even bothered to arm themselves?)

And Ryan shifts his attention from Mogar to Ramsey to defend himself as the tension in the room starts to rise when Mogar chooses to finally speak up since the others had interrupted his movie. “I’m a little insulted you don’t think I could find this place by myself.”

Ramsey freezes and Gavin (he’d finally learned the Brit’s name when Ramsey had screamed it after kicking the door in and it disturbs him a bit that he has no intel on Gavin or what his role in the crew is. But that could be a bureaucratic oversight with papers lost in transit or it could mean Gavin is better than Mogar thinks. From where he stands now, Mogar feels safe in assuming Grifter based on looks alone) has the poor sense to snicker. “What?” Mogar smirks and he likes the way Ramsey bristles. “Consider it a proof of my skill.”

And Jack laughs (Second-in-command though it is possible that Ramsey is just a figurehead. Second most dangerous after the Vagabond based on kill count alone. Other skills unknown. Original name unclear. Origins unknown. Often acts as the getaway driver.) Ramsey glares at her but that earlier tension deflates faster than it rises and Mogar tries not to frown. Ryan nudges Ramsey softly with his shoulder. That is….okay? “I figured your reputation would be enough.”

Mogar shrugs, “Not every legend is true.” He smiles, “Right Rye-bread?” He watches as everyone turns their attention away from Mogar to Ryan, again, and it confuses and amazes him how comfortable they are, so secure in this house. Certainly they don’t think these cuffs could hold him if he wants to hurt them and Ramsey certainly isn’t anywhere near pleased with his presence. So there must be something he’s missing. Either Jack really is in charge (and she is calm, loose limbed and smiling, but Mogar is sure it’s just an act. The same with Gavin’s ease and Ryan’s growing good humor). Or there is an element he isn’t aware of altogether and either way, Mogar isn’t pleased.

“What does he mean ‘Rye-bread’?” Jack mocks with an ease that could only be established between close friends and Mogar makes a note that Ryan clearly has a close relationship with both possible leaders of the Fake AH Crew. Which is very useful. Gavin moves, making his way from kitchen to living room where Mogar can’t watch him.

Ryan is a scowling when he turns to Mogar and it’s Michael who smiles back, all softness and kind eyes. And Mogar watches the pinch between Ryan’s eyebrows loosen; fall away, to be replaced with a smile just as sweet. Based on Ramsey’s sharp intake of breath and the way his glare intensifies, Mogar isn’t the only one who is watching. “I’m not telling that story.”

Jack awes as Gavin walks back in, shoving his phone into his back pocket, “What story?” He gives Geoff a pointed nod.

“The sea world story,” Mogar prompts and when the rest continue to look confused, he pretends to pout as he slips the cuffs off and pointedly rubs his wrists on the table just to watch Ramsey’s mood darken (Jack is unresponsive and Ryan’s body language screams “unamused” from his crossed arms to the way he rolls his eyes) and Mogar is starting to think Ramsey might have something against him beyond just breaking into their hideout. “You _haven’t_ told them the sea world story?”

“I saved that dolphin,” Ryan defends and Michael laughs.

Gavin is leaning against the table on Mogar’s side and it’s the closest a crewmember has gotten to him since they chained him to the chair (but Gavin has been sticking oddly close from the beginning and Mogar can’t help remembering, just for a moment, another boy with too much trust). “I love that story.”

“Me too,” says an unfamiliar voice and Mogar turns to look (because this must be the fabled marksman the FBI had yet to identify with a face let alone a name, always just a little too well hidden in the shadows. But still extremely capable of wrecking immense amounts of damage according to LSPD reports. Their only weakness being the leash Ramsey held and the tendency to over count their ammo) and couldn’t mask his surprise.

“Ray?”

“Hey, Mogar.” Ray says, entering the kitchen, setting the rifle against the wall and taking a seat across from Mogar by Jack. Jack, at last, reacts. Crossing her arms and starring, not at Mogar, but at Ray in confusion. Ramsey is vibrating, tapping his fingers against his arms as he fidgets, shifts from leaning against the table to standing straight (and in a way it reminds Mogar of Gavin’s bouncing). Even Ryan is thrown and Mogar is reminded that he’d met Ray before he’d met Ryan. But he’s surprised Ray hadn’t told the other’s their shared history when the crew had discussed bringing him in for a heist (they had discussed it, right?).

Gavin is the first to ask, “You know each other?”

“Yeah,” Ray grins, leaning comfortably against the back of his chair as Mogar narrowed his eyes and leans forward. “He’s the fucker who killed my first crew.”

…

That night Michael falls asleep to wake up in a field of brittle grass with nothing but cloudless blue sky to keep him company. The sun is gone but it’s forever bright and the heat beats against his bare shoulders (and he looks down and he can’t see his feet, just grass and grass and grass: dead and yellow). And he knows it will rain soon. He knows this as certain as he knows he needs to head west. He just needs to give it time.

As he walks, the wind picks up. Turning the grass to dust until he’s walking through a desert of endless moving sand until his legs give out. So he crawls forward on aching, dusty fingers because he has to see the sea before it’s too late.

(He hopes it isn’t too late.)

…

Michael comes in next week and for a brief moment, considers getting back in his car and driving out of Los Santos and out of the West and heading South. Maybe to Austin or Dallas. He could make it at least out of town before Ryan started looking for him. He might even be kind enough to just let Michael run. He had done it once before.

And the arm that slips around his waist has Mogar going for his knife until he recognizes the smell and relaxes. Michael’s head falls back against Ryan’s shoulder and Michael smiles.

“You need to stop letting me sneak up on you,” Ryan scolds him.

“One day, I’m going to kill you.” Michael agrees, shifting his hold on the bag so it hangs carefully off his shoulder. “Are you here to escort me in?”

“No,” Ryan lies.

Michael rolls his eyes. “Did Ramsey send you? He doesn’t seem to keen on me.”

“You did break in to his house.” Ryan is stalling. Mogar can tell. He’s hiding, standing behind Michael in a way that he knows Michael won’t mind, has his fingers pressing in tight along Michael’s sides. Mogar had been partnered on a job that almost went south because Ryan couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking when he’d put it together, had learnt to pay attention to the hands when he needed to read Ryan on a job. Ryan hands had a tendency to give away him away.

“Okay,” Michael shrugs out of his grip and turns around to look at Ryan. And Ryan knows he knows Ryan’s lying, but Ryan seems content to play along so they both pretend that Ramsey doesn’t hate Mogar for reasons beyond work. Doesn’t hate him for something personal that Ryan knows and that Michael is bound to figure out. Instead, Michael let’s Ryan take his bag like a gentleman and follows him inside and into the elevator where Ryan enters a code on a little number pad too fast for Michael to catch. Which is okay. If things go to plan then Ramsey will be handing him that code personally.

Jack greets him by the door and Michael tries to be surprised when Kerry waves at him from the corner of the office Jack leads them too. And he slips into Mogar as he takes a seat by the window as Ryan sets the bag down at his feet. Ryan moves to a seat by the front. On the left of a seat that, if Mogar had to guess, was reserved for Ramsey. And that’s interesting.

Gavin smiles at him and Mogar smiles back.

Ray comes in next and sits as far away from Mogar as he can and Mogar sighs. This is going to be a problem. Because he knows what it’s like to lose a crew (and that pain is never going to go away; he’s accepted that a long time ago) so he knows that this isn’t something Ray is just going to get over. But as long as the Marksman doesn’t trust him, Ramsey is justified. And if Ramsey doesn’t trust him than Mogar might as well pull it now.

But Mogar is stubborn. He is going to see this out until he can’t.

Ryan and Jack are talking about a new crew in town, huddled together in the corner of the room. Their voices are soft, but not quite whisper. Nonetheless, Mogar can barely catch a few names that he jots down on his phone to look up further. A new crew meant tension for in-group dynamics and he might need that in the future. Tension…is always helpful when you need to break someone. Whether that someone is a group or a victim.

Ramsey enters last and takes a seat by a white board and gestures for Gavin to start laying out the plan. He sits with his back pointedly against the white board, his eyes scanning the room every now and then as Gavin continues on. Ramsey’s eyes always stall on Mogar as Mogar takes notes, paying attention not only to Gavin but also how the crew reacts to each other, and he fights the urge to look up and smile. Now isn’t the time to taunt, but it’s tempting.

Ray seems connect to play a game on his DS, but whenever Gavin stops talking for a moment, Ray’s fingers will pause for just a moment. Mogar makes a note in the margins of his book: “enjoys a façade of uncaring or slacker.” Ryan is engaged. He seems to obsessively poke holes into the plan, but it rarely throws Gavin off who, while still fidgety (and Mogar writes “wild card” by Gavin’s name next to “Grifter?”), is almost too confident. But it is a solid one as far as Mogar is concerned as long as everyone does their part so he leaves the prodding to Ryan (“protective”). Ramsey probably wouldn’t like it if he questioned anything anyway. Jack is talking to Kerry and based on the quick glances Kerry keeps shooting him (and Michael needed to get a screen on Kerry because he wants to keep his end of the deal. It depends on if Kerry lets him) it’s about Mogar. At one point, Mogar catches Jack’s eyes and nods before turning back to the board (“confused” he writes by Jack’s name and Mogar can admit he doesn’t know what to make of the woman at the moment). 

When Gavin’s done, Ramsey turns the attention to him. “You got it?”

“I got it,” Mogar echoes. A two-part heist to take out an armored truck seems pretty standard. He’d heard about the Fake AH Crew’s need for flare so he’s a little disappointed that there’s no Cargobob. He wants to see Jack in the air. “Though I could bring someone in to watch as second eyes,” he prompts. Ray is good; Mogar has the scars to prove it. But another marker on Eigth would be helpful.

“No.” Ramsey is quick to assure him and Mogar catches Ryan’s eye as if to say ‘see what I mean.’ “Ray is good, right.”

Ray is still starring at his 3DS but he’s glaring at the screen, gripping the edges a little tight. And has Mogar hurt his pride? “Right.”

Mogar shrugs, lets it go, and watches as Jack moves, drawing the attention of Gavin and Ryan and Kerry and a reluctant Ray, to the list of gear they need to ensure they have on them. Ramsey though, never takes his eyes off him and Mogar smiles.

Tension is good, after all.

…

Mogar’s job is a waiting game. He’s used to it. Demolition is always a timed activity. But it’s always nice when he doesn’t have to wait too long.

“Target spotted,” Ryan says over the COM, his voice slightly muffled through distance and mask. “Moving in.”

“Wait until Gavin is clear,” Ramsey cuts in, holds him off as Mogar watches the truck move from screen two to screen three in the back of Gavin’s van. Hacker. Though he wasn’t scratching Grifter off the list just yet.

Gavin groans, soft, under his breath, inaudible over the COM. They’re running late. And Gavin hasn’t looked away from his screens for a second and he’s left leg is shaking. So Mogar leans over, touches him softly on the shoulder with his shoulder. When Gavin looks over, he smiles and whispers “Don’t worry. Just stick to the plan, right?”

Gavin grins. “A minute and Mogar’s clear, Geoffers.” Jack makes a sharp turn and Mogar feels his chair slide a bit.

“Make it a second.” Jack cuts in and Mogar is beaming, can feel the itch grow stronger under his skin and he grabs his bag from the corner: two electric charges, two sticky bombs and a few hand grenades.

Gavin is typing something, stock still for the first time since Mogar has met him (“work oriented”), before he closes his laptop with an air of finality. “We’re good, boys.”

Mogar cheers as Jack slows enough that he can fly out of the truck and hit the pavement running. Gavin quick on his tail as Jack pulls out fast to make it to Ramsey. Somewhere overhead Ray is watching his back and Mogar hopes that Ray holds off on the potshots until he gets to watch something explode. “Ready for this?” He’s grinning and for a moment it’s just as much Michael as it is Mogar because this is always going to be something he enjoys. The thrill and the heat and the knowledge that he is good at it. He and Gavin are setting charges to take out the truck’s tires when he tosses a stray grenade to Gavin as he fishes through the bag for the C4 meant for the front of the truck.

“What’s this for?” Gavin asks, holding the grenade like it might explode at any moment and Mogar rolls his eyes.

“Just in case.”

Ramsey is in their ear, telling them they’ve got another minute to get out before Ryan gets the truck over so Gavin and Mogar are moving. Hightailing it to the marked spot, out of watch from Ray. And Gavin is giddy but so is Mogar so for once he doesn’t find it annoying.

The first explosion has Mogar grinning as Gavin moves out of cover to catch it on film. And when did the fucker get a camera? The second is a cue and for a moment Mogar is all business as he heads out. He spies the Vagabound between the smoke for just a moment before he throws the C4 to the front of the car. And then a black sedan is peeling out of the wreckage just as he detonates and he hopes Gavin manages to catch that one on film because it is beautiful. All red and yellow and warm. And for a moment the whole world made sense.  

But he doesn’t have too much time to admire it as much as he wants because the sound of sirens are coming down the street too fast and Kerry is apologizing and Ramsey is yelling at them to move and they are. And he’s following Gavin through streets and in alleyways because they were supposed to have more time for Ramsey to drop in after picking up Ray and now they don’t. Which sucks.

“So much for the plan,” Gavin yells, all wild limbs as he shoves himself over a fence that Mogar is quick to scale in two jumps. “Show off,” Gavin mutters, a half-tease that Mogar returns with a punch to the arm as they stop and catch their breath. And Mogar lets his bag drop, mostly empty but still heavy.

“What the fuck, Kerry?” he yells and Kerry’s coming in over static.

“They split up on me when they saw the fucking fire!” Kerry yells back. “God damn it!”

“They should have been across the fucking city?” Ramsey cuts in. “How the fuck did they see it?”

“You wanted me to fucking melt a truck,” Mogar defends. And there are cops nearby. And Gavin is looking something up on his phone. And they need to move but not until Mogar can figure out where they’re coming from because god forbid they run straight into them. “That means a big fucking fire.”

There are voices coming down the alleyway and Mogar gestures to Gavin to get back over the fucking fence, which he does with a mumbled “shit.” Together the two try to make their way calmly back out of the network of smaller streets they’d tried hiding in. Ramsey is yelling orders in their ear, sending Ryan back in to get Ray out as he makes his way to a safe point. “Yeah, Geoff, we can get there,” Gavin says as Mogar breaks in and checks out a ground floor apartment, gun drawn, before motioning to Gavin to come in.

“Get where?” Mogar demands as they lay low and the LSPD pass by. “Safe house?”

“Pick up point,” Gavin clarifies. “It’s by the edge of the city, clear air space for Jack. But first…” And he clicks a few buttons on his phone.

“What are you doing?” And the sound of sirens pulling away in the distance has Mogar smiling. “How…?”

Gavin laughs and tucks away his phone. “We can’t all make things explode.”

And Mogar had underestimated the man. And maybe Ryan was right. They were very, very good (“quick thinker”). Mogar moves to the front of the apartment where the cops are dispersing. Some heading down the road and the rest staying, forming a blockade. Turns out the LSPD are a little more capable then they thought (and that was always the downside of being undercover; cops would shoot at you but it was heavily encouraged not to shoot back). Mogar grabs Gavin’s attention, “You still got that grenade?”

“Yeah?”

“How fast can you run?” Mogar takes a moment to send a silent apology to Andrew because this was going to mean a lot of paperwork.

Gavin grins as he hands over the grenade and Michael opens the window wide enough to get a good throw in and he hopes he doesn’t get shot. “As fast as you need.” Gavin assures him.

“Perfect.”

The following explosion and screams settles a buzz in the back of Mogar’s head that he wasn’t aware was there until it was gone. And the adrenaline pushes him through the chaos and past the remnant of charred police cars and bodies to snag a fast looking car from a nearby parking lot.  And as they pull out with the remaining cops rushing after them, it takes Mogar a second to notice Gavin is shaking and bleeding, clutching at his chest with knuckles white. And it doesn’t take him long after to put two and two together. “Fuck!”

“Michael?” And it’s Ryan in his ear this time. But Mogar is too busy trying to avoid crashing into anything as he cuts through another red light (but they’ve already blown up a few cops so it’s the least of his worries) to snap at him for forgetting to use codenames.

“I needed a medic like five minutes ago,” he says instead as he pulls onto the highway thanks to Gavin’s half mumbled directions. And Mogar can feel himself shaking as he notices the blue and white helicopter above in the rearview mirror and you have got to be fucking kidding him. Fuck.

(But he can freak out later in the privacy of whatever hotel room he manages to drag himself too after all this is over. But right now… Right now he needs to keep it together because Gavin didn’t deserve to bleed out in the passenger seat of a stolen car—and he doesn’t think about how no one does because the world isn’t fair. And it’s not the time to think about this. It hasn’t gone completely south yet.)

And Jack is cursing in their ear. “I got the chopper but there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to pick you up as long as that helicopter’s on your ass.”

“Get the Medic,” Ramsey orders. “Vagabond, I need you between the pick up point and the cops. Brownman?”

The Marksmen had been oddly quiet but when he spoke he was out of breath and Mogar can only assumed he’d been running too. “Yeah?”

“I need you on a roof. Ryan is going to need backup.”

“Got it Boss.”

By the time they make it to the construction site, they’ve managed to loose at least a few of their trails but the helicopter is circling above which means the cars aren’t far behind and Gavin’s falling asleep, head lolling to the side and voice barely there as he managed to finish the last three directions before falling silent. And Mogar doesn’t even bother trying to get him walk as he parks behind a pile of pipes for cover, picks Gavin up as gently as he can and runs into the shelter of the half-finished hotel.

And there’s dust all over so he set’s Gavin down for a moment to shrug off his jacket to use as a barrier between the floor and the wound before he maneuver’s Gavin onto the jacket with his head on Mich-Mogar’s lap. And his hands are shaking as he takes off his shirt and uses it to as a makeshift bandage and then applies pressure to the wound since Gavin doesn’t have the strength. “Hey, you with me, buddy?” he asks as Gavin groans.

“It’s okay.” He tells Gavin even though it’s not. “You’re going to be fine. Jack is on her way.”

The sound of the helicopter above doesn’t budge as a cop gets on a mega phone, telling him to “surrender, we have you surrounded.” Mog-Michael is desperately trying to avoid dry heaving as Gavin’s blood squelches under his hands, never ending no matter how hard he presses the t-shirt down. And Gavin’s still making soft sounds under his breath, all broken words and a name that Michael just can’t make out.

“I’m here.” It’s Ryan and the sound of gunfire has never felt so relieving.

“Just hold on a little longer, Gavvy,” Michael is blabbers now as the gunfire lets up and a sticky bomb goes off. And he’s scared. He’s so scared he’s going to lose another one. The blood is getting everywhere (and he’ll never get used to how much blood a body can hold.) But Gavin is reaching out so Michael takes his hand in his and squeezes too hard. “Ryan and Ray are here. Jack’s on her way, okay?”

Gavin looks up at him, glassy eyed and Michael isn’t even sure Gavin can hear him. But as long as Gavin stays awake then it’s going to be okay. “That’s right. It’s going to be okay.”

(And he doesn’t think about another body and another boy who trusted too much where it wasn’t okay. It will never be okay. He doesn’t do it. Not now. Soon. When he’s alone and it’s okay to break down, he’ll scream and cry and rage. But for now, he doesn’t remember. Because if he tells himself enough, maybe he’ll even forget.)

When the doors to the building bust open, Michael grabs for his gun and only freezes when Jack comes into view. “Thank god,” Michael breathes, letting the medic push his makeshift bandage out of the way and get to work. “Oh god, Jesus motherfucker.”

And the sound of gunfire and explosions and screams and fire is still going on outside (and how many cops are the LSPD throwing at them; how many people are dying as they try to keep Gavin alive) and Gavin is still clammy in front of him. But there’s a medic and Jack and that’s more than there was last time (just him and a body in a warehouse far, far away). “Is he…?” Michael asks and Jack nods and says, “Caleb will help him, Mogar,” as the medic calls his attention.

“I need you to hold him still because this is going to hurt,” the medic, Caleb, says and Michael nods, holds Gavin’s shoulder’s down.

“This is gonna hurt, Gavvy,” Michael tells him. “But I’ve got you and Jack’s here and so’s Caleb so it’s gonna be okay. Okay?”

And Gavin is looking at him and nodding or maybe he’s swaying. And it makes sense that even now Gavin wouldn’t be able to hold still. Of course. Always bouncing, dancing, shifting. Even now it felt natural to watch Gavin sway to a song no one else hears. And Michael smiles. And he stays smiling even as Gavin cries out and Jack has to hold down his legs as Caleb does what is needed. He keeps smiles through the tears collecting in the corner of his eyes and the way his hands keep shaking and the sound of war outside their small haven is never ending. He smiles after it’s over and it’s safe to move him because Gavin never looks away and Michael want’s to tell him, “It’s going to be okay.”

…

Ryan catches Michael when it’s all over.

Takes him back to a safe house in a beaten up, shot up hunk of junk with Gavin asleep on the back seat, his head still on Michael’s lap because no one bothers trying to separate them after Gavin had cried out when Michael had started to move away. Helps Michael find his way too a bathroom to wash off the dust and ash and blood. Takes time to lean in, splash water behind Michael’s ears and Michael laughs for a moment before he catches himself, mouth pressed shut and pulled down so Ryan presses a kiss to shaggy wet curls. Picks him up when Michael’s legs give out when he tries to step out of the tub and instead lands on his knees. Carries him to a bedroom tucked away in the back of the base where sleep calls for him.

So when Michael manages to open his eyes, there’s water on the tableside and Ryan is gone. And he feels a deep ache in the pit of his stomach that only comes after the adrenaline has left you to suffer as he considers getting up. But the rattle of a gun and the deep boom of an explosion are suffocating in his ear and he can’t stop feeling blood under his finger nails even though he’d scrubbed them until Ryan had told him too stop (and it’d been a long time since Ryan had been there after a job gone wrong). So instead he just lies there and waits for Ryan to come back, keeps his eyes open starring at the lazy whirl of a ceiling fan above and tries not to think.

In the hallway where the lights are still on come voices. “…heard him, Geoff…” says Jack as Ryan opens the door and Ramsey says, “Probation,” in a voice one would whisper “death,” all hard consonants and rattled fear in the chest. And Jack’s voice starts to argue before Ryan crawls into bed and cuts in with a “Good night, Michael.”

Michael let’s his eyes slide shut.

…

He dreams of nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for all the great feedback you've been sending me! I really appreciate it. I hope you guys liked this chapter too. Originally it was supposed to be about 1500 to 2000 words longer but in the interest of keeping the chapters bellow 5000 words, I've had to do some rearranging so the story might end up being longer than 10 chapters. So that's exciting.
> 
> As I feared, schools is definetly kicking off so chapters will be coming out every 2 weeks unless something happens and it's delayed. After all, as much as I love FAHC, school is the most important thing in my life so please be patient with me. Thanks~
> 
> Finally! As a quick recommendation, there is an awesome FAHC one-shot written by the lovely [butterflyknifle ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyknifle/pseuds/butterflyknifle) called [It's What We Call The Truth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4683704). It is a little sad, but it's amazingly written and I love it so much. So seriously go read it! Especially if you love Myan like I do.
> 
> See you guys in two weeks!  
> ~The Queen


	4. Chapter 4

The living room windows overlook downtown Los Santos and Ryan is making him coffee because Michael can’t figure out what combination of knob and lever equals normal and not foam. And he’s not awake enough to Google it. And his hands are shaking too hard to hold the cup straight anyway. But Gavin is sleeping peacefully in a bedroom upstairs and the medic is sitting on the coach, answering emails like nothing is wrong. And there isn’t.

(And he’s ignoring the feeling in his throat that says otherwise.)

And the last time he’d been in this kitchen was tied to the chair and if he bothered to look, he would still see the handcuffs against the polished wood.

(But he’s ignoring that too.)

And when Ryan comes back, his phone starts buzzing and it’s Andrew. Of course it’s Andrew, who has every right to be angry with him. And when the texts turn to calls, Michael tries to hold his hands still enough to turn off the phone but it keeps slipping. And when Ryan shuts it off for him, he ignores the sinking feeling in his gut.

(Because he’s too tired and if he says that’s the reason he won’t have to think about why. Because he’ll have time to think about it later….)

When Ramsey walks downstairs, Michael nods a good morning because being verbal is hard when your tongue feels like lead. Ramsey tries to smile. It’s jarring (but it’s also a nice smile; it reaches his eyes). Ryan hands him his coffee and takes a seat next to him on the small sofa that faces the windows that overlook downtown Los Santos and Michael lets it warm his hands. Jack wishes him a good morning and Michael smiles at her. She’s cleaned up, the dust and blood in her hair is gone, and Michael doesn’t know why he expected otherwise. And his hands twitch around his coffee.

(Because blood has a tendency to stain underneath the skin and, for once, he wishes it were visible.)

Ray shuffles into the kitchen on quiet feet and if Michael hadn’t looked away from the window to look at Ryan in the early morning sun, all yellows and blues in the cool white of their apartment, he would have missed him settle onto a kitchen chair as Jack handles their overly complicated coffee machine with a finesse born only of practice.

“Michael?” Ryan asks and Michael finally takes a sip of his coffee and leans closer and hums.

“Thanks,” Michael says, finally after a moment and Ryan smiles. It’s all teeth (and it’s lovely).

Slowly the living room fills in as the others gather their versions of breakfast and the Medic (and Jack had told him the medic’s name hadn’t she? Abel or something…) leaves as Geoff takes his place on the coach. The TV clock reads 8:04AM and Michael has finished his cup of coffee but he’s still holding it. Ryan hasn’t moved from his side.

Jack’s the only one eating real food—toast—and the crunch of bread cuts through the early morning silence. But it falls into the background as outside the city noise picks up and drifts through the open balcony doors as if nothing had happened. And perhaps nothing rather important had happened. It was Los Santos. He’d heard the rumors. And as the minutes move on, they just sit and Michael watches airplanes fly from his vantage point and Ryan’s warmth is a constant in his side.

And when Ryan lightly pushes against his side and brings him back to reality, Michael turns to look at Jack, who’s talking.

“Your cut will be sent through Ryan.” She offers and Michael nods. “There’s a little extra in there for dealing with the fall out.”

“How’s Gavin?” Michael asks for the first time that morning and Ramsey huffs over his cup of coffee.

Jack gives Ramsey a pointed look that Michael can’t read but it makes Ramsey slump and Ray roll his eyes. “He’s good, Mogar. Caleb says he just needs to be on bed rest for a week or two and he’ll be fine.”

Michael nods and stands. “That’s good.” It’s best he takes his leave before Ramsey remembers how much he hates him. He carries his mug to the kitchen and rinses it in the sink. It’s going to rain soon. Maybe he’ll catch a cab back to his motel.

He’s making his way to the door when Ramsey calls out to him through clenched teeth, “We’d like you to join the crew.”

“I don’t do crews.” Michael cuts in on reflex because its what he always says when the crew he’s built up is offering him an in and the minute he says it, he remembers it’s the wrong thing to say because he was supposed to want in and he _forgot_.

“What do you mean you don’t ‘do crews’?” And it’s Ray and he sounds…Michael can’t read it but Ray’s glaring and he’s clutching at his almost-empty glass of apple juice too tight and his posture is all straight back and puffed chest.

And Michael’s panicking. Shoving his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that they’re shaking because were did that come from? He knows better…He knows how to do this and fuck. _Fuck!_ It wasn’t supposed to be this easy but that doesn’t mean he throw it away either.

“I’m sorry,” And Michael looks at Ryan when he says it, hopes his voice isn’t shaking. And he means it, perhaps to himself or to Andrew or to Ryan or to the cops that died yesterday. He doesn’t know. But he says it, “I’m sorry.” And no one says anything so he says, “I think it’s best I leave.”

…

_Mogar is born like this:_

Michael was young and scared and very good at his job. It didn’t take long for Michael to confirm where orders were coming from and who was in charge and to send their names to the FBI: Detective David Hill and Officer Stephanie Fitzgerald. Both Jersey natives who entered the service out of high school. Michael hoped they had started out good and gone crooked. He really did.

“Hey, David,” Michael greeted, pleasant and sweet like he had from day one, and accepted the coffee David handed him. “What’s on my plate today?”

“Paper work and then patrol.” David shrugged. And Michael had been trying to get David to trust him since day one, going out of his way to do favors and be generally nice and he hoped he’d been making progress. Because Agent Park called with a need for more information and Michael hadn’t been trained for this, but he thought he was good enough. “Hey, do you want to go out for drinks later?”

And that caught Michael off guard because no one had bothered to invite him out since he’d first started all of this. But of course he said, “Yes.”

When he went out after work, he was only half surprised when David didn’t take him to the bar but instead to a house tucked away in a suburb he didn’t know. He didn’t question it when David invited him inside where Officer Fitzgerald was lounging, nursing a beer, and Detective Mattocks was reading a book. Instead he said, “Oh.”

David laughed. “Oh?”

Michael shrugged. “I gotta admit,” he said, more confidently than he felt as he moved into the house and picked up a beer from the table. “I didn’t think it’d be this easy.”

And now Mattocks was laughing and Fitzgerald toasted him with a lazy wave of her hand. “I knew I was gonna like him.”

.

The change was almost immediate and Michael found himself being dragged from event to event after work, getting easier patrols and less paperwork. He wondered if this was how David had bought out all of the officers and felt sick as he drank beer with them and ate dinner with them and forced himself to hold pleasant conversation with them.

But the worst part was as time went on, he found himself forcing himself less and less to smile and laugh and enjoy their company because perhaps if they had met in another world, where David and Stephanie and Mattocks had made better decisions, then they could have actually have been friends. And perhaps, as he wiretapped them and looked through their emails and agreed to bug their telephones, he thought about that a little too much and tried not to feel guilty.

(Because they couldn’t be friends. Michael wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t.)

The day they invited him on his first raid (he’d really be running patrol in the area with the intention of keeping those who didn’t know innocent), Michael called Agent Park with a warning to stop it before it began. Instead, she told him to do it because “they need to follow the drugs to follow the money.” And Michael couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that something was about to go very wrong. It sat in his gut like rocks or in his throat like a string wrapping tighter and tighter. The night he woke up screaming, he had to reassure his girlfriend that he was fine and it was just work (it was a lie but it also wasn’t and it made things easier as they drifted father and father apart—but wasn’t he doing that with everyone lately? When was the last time he’d called his mother? But better not think about that.)

And when the raid went down, he was circling with Stephanie and they were laughing like maniacs over their shared love of inaccuracies in Law & Order as Hill yelled at them to shut up over their private COMS when things went south. There was a series of unplanned gunshots followed by dead silence and then an annoyed _“fuck”_ from Mattocks.

“What the fuck, Hill?” Stephanie snapped.

Michael started driving towards the raid site and she called over the radio to make sure they’d be the only ones on scene. And Michael’s hands were shaking as he gripped the steering wheel too tight. It wasn’t until Hill came back on and reassured them he’d got the stuff that Michael could breath again.

  
“Turns out the old man wasn’t too pleased with the deal his son struck,” David continued. In the background there was the sound of a… a child?

“Guys…” Michael’s voice has never been so small. “What are you doing? Who’s that?”

Stephanie rolled her eyes as they pulled up in front of the meeting house and Michael watched as Mattocks dragged a young boy of no more than sixteen into the back of their car. The kid was crying, bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow and yet covered in too much blood for it all to be his own.

“Someone’s gotta take the blame, Mikey,” Mattocks reminded him before he shut the door. Fitzgerald closed the divider between them and the backseat as the boy begged them not to do this and Michael couldn’t breath and that string was pulling tighter. But he wouldn’t cry until he was alone. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

He’d come too far.

And there was another wrong body and a child in jail and that was on him. He knew it was.

When he went home that night, he took a bath for too long and climbed into bed and tried not to think about anything as his girlfriend attempted to coax him out for dinner before giving up and leaving, probably off to call her mother and complain. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. He’d heard her.

His phone buzzed and it was his brother and then his other brother and then his mother, but instead he called Park because how could he explain? How could he justify what he’d done when all he’d wanted to do was good? And how could this possibly be good?

“It isn’t your fault, Michael,” Park told him. He tried to believe her. But he couldn’t. “It’s the coast of the work. It always is.”

“Can we help him?” Michael asked, and there were tears in the corner of his eyes as he thought about that poor child still dripping in the blood of his late father. Michael could only imagine the way the boy had clung to his father’s corpse in the aftermath until Mattocks had dragged him away, screaming and sobbing. It was enough to make his stomach roil and the tears fall.

“No.”

The next day, Mattock patted him on the back and handed him a coffee and told him, “Good job.”

“Thanks,” and the coffee went down like glue. But he smiled nonetheless when Hill wished him good morning and bumped shoulders with Fitzgerald as they made their way to their patrol car.

“The Boss is impressed,” Stephanie said from behind the steering wheel as Michael tucked his phone away. He’d just texted his mother a “good morning” and his brothers an “I’m fine. J”

Michael looked out at the road. “With what?”

“Yesterday.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so fucking dense, Mikey.”

Michael scowled (and it worried him how easy it was to banter with her as the Turnpike stretched on and the faint sound of radio chatter flittered in and out of the car alongside the sound of angry 9 AM Jersey traffic). “Do you guys have to call me that?”

“Whatev,” Fitzgerald said. She made a sharp right and rolled to a stop in a space between dividers because traffic tickets were boring and useless but they were required so they’d do it. Michael slid down further in his seat and got ready for boredom.

“What’d I do yesterday to impress the boss so much?” he asked finally, because he knew Stephanie and she wanted him to ask and she was stubborn.

She scowled again. “Not that boss. Detective Mattocks. He was impressed by the way you handled it yesterday, booking that kid and everything. He says…” And she cut herself off and smiled. “Well! We’re gonna celebrate tonight and then you’ll know.”

“I thought David was in charge.” Michael frowned and sat up to look at her. “What?”

“We needed to know if you could be trusted.” She shrugged. “Don’t get your lady panties in a twist there, Jones.”

Michael swallowed hard. “So that was a test?” And he thought about the way he had to scrub the blood out of the back seat yesterday, and the way the boy had screamed for them to listen to him, that he hadn’t killed his father, and he was so… so scared….

Stephanie grinned. “You passed with flying colors,” she reassured him.

“Thanks.” Michael tried to smile as he tried to keep his breakfast down. “That’s good to know.”

.

He kissed his girlfriend when he came home and dragged her to bed after shutting off his phone because thinking was too hard. And it was hard enough trying to breathe to even try thinking. And when it was over, he waited until she fell asleep before he slipped out of bed and went to kneel on the uneven, semi-polished wood that made up their deck and open his phone.

“It’s a gang in DC,” he told Park when she picked up. And there was a moment of silence before the rustle of fabric and footsteps. Suddenly he was on speakerphone and talking to Park’s boss. But he was too tired, too weighed down, and scared, and a little too sad to freak out just yet. “They’re called the Red Hens and their second-in-command is coming to town this weekend. Mattocks wants me working security while they talk at the precinct.”

“This is amazing work, Jones,” Park’s boss said, and Michael couldn’t remember the man’s name for the life of him, just the odd wrinkle on the right side of his nose. “We’ll get a team down there…”

“With all due respect sir – ” Park cut in and Michael shifted, leaned back against the walls of his ranch-style home and looked up. If he squinted he could just see the stars through the browning leaves. “We know where the drugs going and it’s the perfect chance to track where the money is going.”

There was a moment of silence and Michael wouldn’t be surprised if he’d dozed off for a moment before he tuned back in to hear Park and her boss arguing and then silence and then an “It’s up to him, isn’t it?”

And then there was movement on the other end and suddenly Michael isn’t on speakerphone anymore and he was confused and tired and… scared. But he’d been scared since the beginning so that wasn’t new. “You could do this, Michael.”

“What…?” Michael wanted to go to bed and curl around his girlfriend and cry. But instead he watched the stars through fall leaves and listened to Park explain how he could see this through to the end. How it could cost him everything, but save so many.

“I traded a life for this information,” Michael told Park. “I have to make that mean something.”

“You could never go home again, Michael,” Park warned him.

He breathed slow. He thought about his mother. He thought about his girlfriend tucked away, fast asleep on their bed. He thought about his father. He thought about his brothers. He thought about his one-year-old nephew. He thought about their pride. He thought about his home. And then he thought about the bodies on a cold slab. But mostly, he thought about innocents lost.

“He was sixteen,” Michael repeated. “It has to mean something.”

.

He set the charges just before Mattocks returned with this second-in-command who introduced himself as Joseph. “Michael,” he said in return, and smiled as Mattocks led him inside with Stephanie and David at his heel. Stephanie took a moment to wink at him and he grinned back and tried not to think about how he’d miss her.

(Because they’d become friends, hadn’t they? And if only he’d lived in another world.)

He didn’t stick around for much longer. He couldn’t. And he texted Agent Park that he was going through with it and he was only a half block away when David texted him, “It’s a go! We’re a good team, aren’t we?” And when Michael hit the detonator, he had to take a moment to throw up.

He was watching the first responders pull up to the precinct from the roof of a building nearby when Agent Park sat behind him. “Hello.”

“Hello, Michael.” She fidgeted next to him and Michael watched as the fire continued to rage. He was still clutching his phone and he wondered if Stephanie had died laughing. It seemed right that she did. 

“Are you read to go?”

He took a moment to text his girlfriend goodbye. “No,” he admitted. But he got up. He grabbed the bag he’d packed the day before and moved away from the flames, down the fire escape to the car parked below.

“I’m sorry,” Agent Park said as she got into the driver’s side.

“Me, too.”

…

He’s in Santa Maria, in a local Ralphs, browsing their frozen vegetables when Ryan finds him. “You have to stop letting me sneak up on you.”

Michael shrugs and grabs a packet of frozen corn. The hotel he’s staying at has a kitchen with a pot and warm water. He’s sort of excited. “Then stop sneaking up on me.”

“You left,” Ryan continues, stealing the basket. He adds a packet of mixed vegetables and Michael wrinkles his nose.

“I hate carrots,” Michael reminds him as they start walking out of the frozen isle and into the diary. Michael adds a box of blue cheese.

Ryan shrugs. “You can pick them out. You never eat enough vegetables.” Because Michael doesn’t want to talk about it and Ryan is indulging him. Just like Michael has in the past (and this is how they talk about things that mean something until they can’t). Maybe he doesn’t want to make a scene in a grocery store? But yet again… that hasn’t always stopped Ryan before.

“I’m a grown man, Ryan,” Michael reminds him as Ryan adds a jug of milk and then walks to the bread section. The basket must be getting heavy. “I can feed myself.”

“The first time I met you, you were throwing up because you’d tried to eat a five pound gummy bear.”

Michael laughs. “It was a bet.” And he’d forgotten about that. It had been… Andrew? Andrew who’d suggested the deal and Jada who’d put money on it, hadn’t it? Though…that night had been a bit of a blur and he’d been a  bit too close to tipsy to remember it quite right (and it probably helps that he tries not to remember it at all; the good but especially the bad).

“It was definitely something,” Ryan agrees, laughing as he sidesteps to avoid Michael’s smack to the arm.

“Shut up, dude,” Michael grumbles. He follows Ryan to the checkout. When Ryan insists on paying, Michael rolls his eyes but lets him. “I don’t have a car,” Michael admits as they walk out into the parking lot.

“You don’t have a car?”

Michael shrugs. “Didn’t feel like stealing one.” This neighborhood was all middle class. It wasn’t like these people could just buy another car. Though… that probably isn’t a real concern to Ryan.

“I have a car,” Ryan says, leading the way. “Where you staying?”

“I got it on my phone.”

The drive back is peaceful, the local 100s playing in the background as they move through the sleepy neighborhood back to Michael’s Holiday Inn. The sun is starting to set and in the toxic air of this Western city, the sky burns pink. “Are you going to make me talk about my feelings?” Michael half-jokes.

Ryan shrugs as he makes a left like FILSS tells him to. “After dinner.”

“Are you cooking?”

“I don’t trust yours.” Ryan laughs at Michael’s gasp.

“Rude!”

In his cramped hotel apartment, Ryan gets to work, pulling out and rinsing pots and pans from the shelves before pulling out the groceries he needs and putting them away. Watching Ryan cook has always been an amusing pastime for Michael. Either very adept or particularly horrendous, Ryan’s cooking skills tend to change based not on what he’s cooking or the time of day, but rather on something obscure like the passage of the moon. It was the only explanation. The first time Ryan had made Michael eggs, he’d set off a fire alarm and almost melted a pot. And the second time, he’d made a perfect lasagna with homemade pasta sheets (something he’d never attempted to recreate for all Michael has insisted because he didn’t want to “risk getting it wrong”). Considering Ryan has yet to drop anything, Michael has his fingers crossed for something delicious; he really needs a good, home-cooked meal.

“So how long are we staying, Ryan?” Michael asks as Ryan sets the steaks in the fridge to marinate and starts a pot of boiling water. “’Cause that’s a lot of groceries.”

“However long until you’re ready to come back to Los Santos,” Ryan says. His back is turned but Michael can guess the smile on Ryan’s face, a little pleased.

Michael scowls and sits back in his chair, arms crossed. “Ryan… I don’t _do_ crews.”

“I talked to Geoff,” Ryan says. He turns to face Michael. The furrow between his eyebrows is back but his hands are steady as he lays them on the counter. “I made him understand what you meant.”

“Oh? Really,” Michael rolls his eyes, “And how’d ya do that? The guy hates me, Ryan. I don’t know what you have with your boss but…” And Michael trails off as he notices the slight pink of Ryan’s cheeks. “You’re sleeping with him.” Michael hopes his voice doesn’t sound as hurt as he feels. “Christ Ryan! You’re not…”

“Michael…” Ryan sighs and steps away from the counter to check on the oven temperature. “That’s not what I… Everyone knows about the Rockstars and Ray...”

Michael frowns. He doesn’t want to know what Ray said or how Ryan talked about the Rockstars with his boss. Because that is the last thing he’s going to talk about. It’d been eight years and he’s moved on as best as he can. No need to reopen bleeding wounds. “So what? Is it just perks of the job? How long you’ve been sleeping with your boss, _Rye-bread_?”

Ryan groans and Michael watches as his shoulders tense. “Two years,” he says.

“Christ, Ryan! _We’ve_ slept together in the past two years.” Michael powers on even as Ryan turns back to face him and he can see how uncomfortable Ryan is in that minute from the tension in his shoulders to the way he’s awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other, just slightly. “Am I just the exception to the rule? You _don’t_ do casual.”

“The _rule,”_ Ryan says once he’s sure that Michael is done. And Michael hates how well Ryan knows him, hates that he knows Ryan knows the best way to get them back on track is to let Michael ride this conversation out even as Michael does everything he can to push Ryan’s buttons, distract him, get him mad. It’s probably because he’s had practice. And it makes Michael want to stop. But stopping means talking about things he will never, ever be ready to talk about. And Ryan should know that by now.

“What?”

“Only you,” Ryan confirms. “You’re not an exception, Michael. You know that.”

“Oh…” That stops him in his tracks. And doesn’t that make Michael feel like shit? But he can’t stop himself from smiling because okay… okay… “Only me?”

He can’t help the way his voice sounds all soft and hopeful and he thought he’d gotten over this, or at least hidden it better. Ryan didn’t want a thing with him. They’d decided that ages ago. (Especially now that Ryan had Ramsey and what made that tattooed, paranoid asshole so fucking special, anyway?)

“Of course,” Ryan sighs, and he smiles, leaning forward to take Michael’s hands in his own. “So please…” And Michael waits for it. “Come back to Los Santos with me.”

Michael closes his eyes and breathes slow. “After dinner.”

“Okay.” Ryan lets go and steps back. “After dinner.”

They eat outside. Take the steak and blue cheese gravy Ryan made and sat with their legs hanging over the edge of the flat roof that was accessible through the Janitor's room on the top floor and just watch the world flow in and out from their vantage point looking over the highway. Occasionally, the wind would pick up and Michael would lean in closer to Ryan to ward off the chill, replaying the last conversation in his head because how can he say no to that. And anyway, besides Ryan, isn’t it what he wants? To go back? To get in with Ramsey and his crew and wreck it from the inside out?

But part of him still doesn’t. Part of him has to not want it for him to lose cover like that. He’s been in the game long enough to handle himself after a bad job. And he’d messed up. Let himself enjoy Ryan’s company too much, gotten too attached to Gavin—the mysterious crew member with a wider skillset than he let on and a winning smile and a tendency to never stop moving who reminded him of people left better off in the past.

He’s still scared that he might fuck up, blow the con that he’s been building for eight years because Ryan knows him too well or maybe he’ll let Gavin too close. But really…he doesn’t want to hurt Ryan, does he? Because he’s not over it. He’s never going to be over it, to be able to just be friends with Ryan Haywood.

But he also wants to go home. See his mother. See his family. He wants Andrew to be able to go home, see his kids and his wife. Have a normal life. Retire. Stop watching his back and worrying about both cops and crooks. Be able to stay in one place for longer than four months at a time. Buy a house. Maybe adopt a dog… So he should do it, right? Just say yes.

Ryan sets his plate down and pulls Michael closer, tucks his head under his chin because Ryan has always been ridiculously tall. And Michael sighs; of course it’s not that easy.

Michael is finishing rinsing the dishes when Ryan asks again, “Try it, Michael. Come back to the Los Santos with me.”

“Ryan…” Michael sighs as he put the last of the dishes away. He turns on the machine. “I’m not part of the crew. I can’t… but….” And his heart is torn. “For you…I’ll try…”

Ryan pulls him into a hug just as the dishwasher turns on so the only sound Michael can hear is the gurgling of water and the steady sound of Ryan’s breathing. But he is certain that at some point, Ryan says, “Thank you.”

And it just hurts more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter and thank you for the nice feedback you guys sent me. BY THE WAY! I accidently, recently deleted my tumblr blog so if you've been reading from there, my new URL is **MogarQueen117.tumblr.com**. Please consider refollowing me if you want. Or just check out my blog. I post a lot of FAHC fics and headcanons and other stuff that doesn't make it on here. So if you like this story and other stories I've done, consider checking me out.
> 
> And sorry for getting this out a few days late. I had two exams and a midterm in the past two weeks so, as I warned you guys, writing takes a backseat.
> 
> I'll see you guys again in two Sundays.  
> Later,  
> Queen

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Good, The Bad, and The Bloody](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595841) by [mightbeanasshole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole)




End file.
